


The Two of Us

by MlleMusketeer



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Can Megatron get out of his own head long enough for a makeout session, Canonical Character Death, Kissing and also lots of guilt, M/M, Reunions, no no he cannot, or at least discussion of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23145778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MlleMusketeer/pseuds/MlleMusketeer
Summary: Megatron and Terminus have a lot to catch up on. Mtmte/ll spoilers
Relationships: Megatron/Terminus (Transformers)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	The Two of Us

It's a little time before they get enough privacy, because Autobots are everywhere and also incurable snoops, but once they find a decently deserted bit of corridor, Terminus pushes Megatron up against the wall and kisses him, the lengths of their bodies pressed tight together.

There's so much he needs to tell Terminus. Terminus doesn't know who— _what_ he's kissing. He knew Megatron back before it went wrong. He knew Megatron before he made the choices that turned him into the monster he is now.

But as much as he should back off, as much as he should let Terminus know, it's been so long since someone's held him and kissed him like this. For _him_ , not for power, not for whatever he had with Optimus. His hands come up, one around Terminus's chest, the other at the back of his waist, pulling him close. Terminus's knee slots between his legs. The kiss is gentle and exploring, right now; Megatron scrapes dentae over Terminus's lower lip and hears the other mech breathe a moan. A tongue flicks into his mouth.

His nonsense body is buzzing with this. His internals are still stinging with the after-effects of the black hole, he still aches from the battle he fought with Tarn and Overlord, his chest is a mass of throbbing pain where Ratchet pieced him back together. But another mech in his arms, Terminus's mouth on his, they wash pleasure over his frame in an imitation of health and wellbeing.

Terminus's body undulates up against him, pushing him more firmly into the wall. It's good to have the wall at his back. No one can sneak up on him. It's just him and Terminus, it feels _safe._ He can just be a mech right now. Not a leader, not the warlord that brought the galaxy to its knees, not the criminal waiting for a certain execution. Just a person, like any other person, reunited with a—what is Terminus to him? Lover? Mentor? Friend? All of the above?

Terminus makes a soft noise and breaks the kiss. Megatron vents heavily, watching Terminus's face as the other mech studies him. Terminus raises a hand, wipes at Megatron's cheek with a thumb.

"Why are you crying?" he asks softly.

 _Don't change back._ What did Ravage even mean by that? Is this changing back Is this going forward? He wants it. Megatron vents in, sharp, scrubs the heel of his hand over his face. "I don't know."

"How did you survive?" Terminus searches his face. "They took you away. I…didn't expect you'd be coming back. Not as _you._ "

"They shadowplayed me," he says, shocked at the ease with which he says it. "They didn't finish, but I couldn't write. Not the same way. Terminus, I lost my way."

Instead of moving away from him, as he should, Terminus steps in closer. Brings his hands up to Megatron's shoulders. "How?" he asks. He doesn't know what he's asking. His voice is too gentle, too understanding.

Megatron closes his optics in shame.

"I've killed so many people," he rasps. "Terminus, I killed our planet. I killed so many other planets, so many _people._ "

Terminus hums a calming note.

" _Billions_ ," Megatron says. The exact number he can only remember too well. Read out at his trial. The memory's too raw to be accessed. He wants Terminus to take him seriously. He wants Terminus to never know.

"You couldn't remain a pacifist forever," says Terminus.

 _Don't change back._ "You don't understand." He vents harshly.

"I do understand," says Terminus, quiet and firm. A sort of authority Megatron remembers well from his years in the dark. Terminus, easing him out of his latest feedback loop, out of his mind worrying itself to pieces at the edges, out of the fear of being, once again, trapped in that cell with a looming Enforcer. "What of the long, slow atrocity that was business as usual, Megatron? What about all the people like me, dying by inches in the dark? You took _action_. It was what I wanted you to do. I warned you it might destroy you. I warned you it needed to be done. _There was no other way._ "

"There must have been another way," says Megatron. He should be angry but his voice comes out of him small and thready and ashamed.

"How many dying in the dark?" Terminus demands. "They took your voice. They took your _voice,_ Megatron, tell me, _what did they leave you but violence?_ "

" _There must have been another way!_ "

Terminus of all mecha doesn't flinch or back away at the flare of his temper.

"You were an idealist," he says. "You are an idealist. Did you destroy the Functionists?"

"I did." _And so much more._

"Then you stopped the dying in the dark," says Terminus, as if that decides it.

"I caused so many people to die in the dark," snaps Megatron. "Go to one of the Autobots. Ask _them._ "

"The comfortable middle-caste alt modes I see?" sneers Terminus. "The ones acting as if you're their prisoner?"

"I _am_ their prisoner and I deserve it," says Megatron.

Terminus just stares at him.

"Billions dead," says Megatron. "By my hand or by my orders. Worlds killed."

"You freed us."

" _Peace through tyranny_ ," Megatron quotes, bitterly. "My words. Where my attempt at liberation went wrong."

"I trust your reasoning," says Terminus. "If that was where it led you—"

"Primus." Megatron pushes away from the wall, forcing Terminus back. "Decepticon loyalty started far before the Decepticons even formed—it started with you and it's _toxic._ _I was wrong._ "

"About what? That people like me deserved to live?"

"That I needed to burn the galaxy to redeem it!" snarls Megatron. "That people like the people outside this corridor are inherently evil! That I deserved to be in charge of anything!"

"No one deserves anything!" snaps Terminus. "You saw a problem. You did something about that problem. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, but you did it, and the terrible things we both accepted as the way of the world seem to have stopped."

Megatron closes his optics. "And now there are _new_ terrors, and I _made them._ "

"You thought it was going to be bloodless?"

 _"You have no idea what you're talking about!_ "

"Maybe I don't." Terminus's face changes. There's a terrible sympathy, a terrible pity in it now and it makes Megatron flinch away. "What I see is one of the dearest people in the _universe_ to me is hurting, after he achieved something remarkable and terrible. And maybe the other people in this fortress don't see you as a person, Megatron of Tarn, maybe they still see you as the figurehead you became, but you're still that person to me."

The disconnect startles Megatron. It doesn't seem _right_ to be seen as a person, to have someone else _say it_ outside of his processor, where it's a guilty indulgence. He made himself into something larger than life, crueler and untouchable. He never felt he could step away from it.

"I'm here to comfort my friend," says Terminus. "My lover. We'll deal with the rest of it later. When there's been time. When we have to."

 _I still did those things._ Figurehead or individual, it's still on his shoulders.

But Terminus's hands are on his forearms again, and Terminus is tilting his face up and into his, and kissing him deep and slow. Megatron is weak. He doesn't deserve this. He should be insisting to Terminus— _no. I don't deserve this. Skids. Ravage. They're dead because I hesitated. That weakness was enough to damn me. Think about all the billions of others, too._

But he wants, oh how he wants, to step away from that responsibility. To just be a mech, reunited with someone he loves, to simply feel that pleasure and joy.

And he's weak and he gives in to it.


End file.
